your tongue the tied, your lips the shore
by a vegetable
Summary: His legs are curled against your chest, your legs are wrapped around him, it's all perfect indie romance movie setting yet he's there with his glistening wet lips and hooded, uncertain eyes and unable to kiss you.


_A/N: teeny tiny beep bop boys kissin' at sleepovers (or at least trying to) title from Hello Sadness by Los Campesinos! aka the band of my soul._

"Okay, no wait." Something to talk about, "Just, hm, just give me a second I'll get this." He doesn't know what it is he's trying to get, hands around your face, nose pressed to the hollow of your cheeks as you suck on your own tongue, nervous, just as he is but cool about it. "I'm really sorry I just don't get it," stops, as if pondering what 'it' is, chewing on his own teeth and pushing his glasses back up like keeping an avalanche of plastic from tumbling down one skin mountain onto the other. "I can, I can try harder I know." you know. "I really am trying chap, I just." Calm. You press a hand to his hands, like protecting his nervous, twitching fingers as you move back. His face slides against yours and eyes meet through two sets of glasses: his nervous and shimmering behind lenses fogged up by his hot, over-eager breath, yours just as nervous but – previously stated, worth a reiteration – just being cool about it.

"It's just a kiss." You say, "It's just," _just being cool about it_ , "Just a rotation of the head." You act as you speak, "And then you lean forward a little bit." Noses meet, nostrils running over the edge of hard cartilage and a tip pressing into soft brown skin. "Wait, no you're right."

"Harder than it looks, eh?" _Only when you're looking at me like that_.

"No I just wanted you to take your glasses off; they were digging into my face."

"Then you take yours off too."

"Pushy."

"Idiot."

"Fair enough."

You peel his glasses away, and he in turns with yours, careful fingers that are full of nerves and tremors. He licks his lips, as if in preparation but you think he's forgotten that this is about kissing at this point. Curled up, in this old computer chair you really should have kicked out when the wheels started creaking, like a dog or, no not a dog, a kid. A kid is probably a hypocritical word to use seeing as you're a pair of fourteen year olds boys caught up in too deep midnight sleep over conversations and trying to take kissing as carefully as though it were picking gravel out of bloody knees or creeping down dimly lit hallways in the night.

He stares, you stare, he rotates his head, moves forward and presses against your face. There are no touching lips. None of the painful teeth clacking that Dave had told you about in some vain hope to scare you off the prospect of kissing forever. Jake isn't kissing you. He's hovering next to your lips with his lips and looking like his brain might implode any second.

"Do I just –"

"Move in? Yes." You reply and your hands are moving, still clasping his glasses you fold them up carefully and cast them aside on your desk, replacing themselves on his waist. His legs are curled against your chest, your legs are wrapped around him, it's all perfect indie romance movie setting yet he's there with his glistening wet lips and hooded, uncertain eyes and unable to kiss you. "It's just pressing skin against skin, man. Imagine we're high-fiving except slower and we're moving our palms around against each other. Also our palms just happen to be our lips and we're not high-fiving we're kissing."

"Okay…" a deep breath like he's about to dive somewhere, technically he is. Diving against your lips may be a stretch for the verb but you can deal, you like the idea. Jake, voluntarily diving into what the heck the world of kissing is with you as his guide to tongue on tongue action.

Voluntarily.

"Jake, do you really want to do this?"

"Yes!" he almost yelps, and you shh him frantically, worried he'll wake up Dave, if Dave even is asleep. "Sorry, I forgot our lips are supposed to be sealed as of this activity but _yes_ Dirk of _course_ I do."

"Lips are sealed. Good one."

"Thanks but that's not what I was getting at." Jake shifts in the grip of your thighs, moves his hands and rests them against his knees, chin atop his wrists. His bottom lip sticks out, his eyes wide, a puppy of a boy if ever you've seen one. "I'm suppose I'm just a little nervous, my good man. Kissing isn't as easy as it looks in all of the movies I've seen."

"First of all, the rom-coms you watch are so incredibly cheesy I doubt the make outs featured could be considered actual kissing and more over paid actors slapping their mouths together at the speed of a cow eating grass." He chuckles at that, "Second of all, sure it is. If actors can eat face and make it look like they're having the best make-out session ever recorded in make-out history then we can share a quick smooch in my stupid broken computer chair."

"Why are we even doing this?"

"We're angsty teenaged boys who have been toeing the line between best friendship and romantic intimacy for years, why the hell not."

Jake eyes soften, his head lolling sideways and throwing a glance at the clock that blinks with red number eyes and hums against the bedside table. He blinks at the time, ridiculously late or ridiculously early, it is hard to define, but he frowns. Tired.

A pang of sympathy hits you, and you hand him back his glasses. He slips them on and buries his head in his legs, soft green pyjama trousers and tired green eyes. You prefer the green of his eyes.

"I'm really, really sorry, Dirk." He murmurs.

"It's okay." You lean back, looking at the spackle ceiling above, reflections of the street lamps outside cast against the white in soft yellow stripes. "I hope you didn't feel obligated."

"Less obligated more over-eager my friend."

"Always nice to know that you're over-eager to get into my pants, English."

"Oh shut it you cad."

Almost of their own volition, your hands slip to Jake's face, cupping round brown cheeks in spidery white fingers. You're all soft eyes, you can tell, that mushy side of you you hate; the one with the fluttering eyelashes and the words like cliché sentences from a romance novel and the side that wants to kiss Jake English. Jake gazes back like you're the dust scattered screen that he watches his beloved movies on, like _Avatar_ is being projected onto your skin except you shouldn't compare Jake's attachment to movies to Jake's attachment to people.

"Take your time." Fingers brushing against his skin, a gentle pattern of circles, or squares, you're not paying attention to the shapes. You care more about the way it feels against your fingertips, maybe the way Jake feels. "It's just a stupid kiss. Ain't like kissin' is only ever a onetime thing."

"You're being awful thoughtful about this whole affair, Strider." The smallest of smiles, "Awful gentle."

"Well it's important, right? First kiss and all that. It's supposed to be…special, or something." You drop your hands from Jake's face, running them through your hair, mussed and limp and never quite as bouncy when you go to bed as it is during the day. "Can't have you remembering your first kiss as being forced and uncomfortable."

"Well," Jake quietens, "It'll be your first too, right." Blinks, "If mine is going to be good then yours is going to be good too. I'll wait for the right moment as much as you will."

"I appreciate the sentiment."


End file.
